


with you, eventually

by gsparkle



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 5+1 Things, Deaf Clint Barton, F/M, Natasha Romanov's Arrow Necklace, POV Natasha Romanov, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-23 14:34:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13789752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gsparkle/pseuds/gsparkle
Summary: They're notdating, just hanging out together. On Valentine's Day. In progressively nicer places.(Or: five Valentine's evenings and one Valentine's morning.)





	with you, eventually

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CloudAtlas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudAtlas/gifts).



> For the be_compromised 2018 Valentine's Day prompt-a-thon! I went with "Clint and Nat go on dates with each other on Valentine's Day those years they don't have a partner to go with, and that's totally normal, okay, Tony? Just... it's been a while since they've had partners. And the restaurants are getting fancier."
> 
> title from "Always Where I Need to Be," by the Kooks (one of my favorite songs for these two!) thanks forever-ever to santiagoinbflat!

-1-

 ****“I know I’ve only known him a few months,” Natasha begins as she pulls out a chair at Maria and Sharon’s lunch table, “But something is definitely off with Barton today.”

“Something’s off with Barton every day,” Sharon snorts into her salad. Maria scans the cafeteria for Clint, who is blankly sprinkling salt into his coffee. “Ah,” Maria says in that enigmatic way Natasha hates. “I was wondering when this would happen.”

Natasha trades a nonplussed look with Sharon, who shrugs and shoves another forkful of lettuce into her mouth. Once it becomes clear that Maria isn’t going to elaborate on her own, Natasha grinds out, “When _what_ would happen?”

“Oh,” says Maria cryptically, “I couldn’t say,” which is bullshit considering how often Maria swings down to her office _exclusively_ for the purpose of swapping gossip; but she stands and says, “Come on, Carter, we’ve got a briefing,” before Natasha can argue.

“Good luck!” Sharon chirps unhelpfully as she walks off behind Maria. She doesn’t see either of them the rest of the day, just Clint drinking salty coffee and walking into the women’s bathroom and always, always staring into the distance with an odd, empty look. He normally clocks out at 4:59, so when Natasha walks by his cubicle at 6:30 and he’s still there, she _has_ to stop. Clint distracted is one thing, but Clint working late? Unheard of.

“Okay, out with it,” she says by way of greeting, and Clint jumps in his seat. “What could possibly keep the great Hawkeye at work this late?” She leans over his shoulder and peers at his calendar. “Shit, _and_  today’s Valentine’s Day?”

“Yeah, well,” Clint says, shoving at the paperwork strewn over his desk. He gets it into some sort of order, but not before Natasha has a chance to catch _Plaintiff: Barbara Morse_ and _Defendant: Clinton Francis Barton_ and _Grounds: Irretrievable Breakdown_ in big black serious letters. “I--I was just about to leave.”

Natasha is not a talker, _definitely_ not a fixer, but that odd, blank stare in his eyes is looking a little like despondency and a lot close to tears. “I was going to go to the taco truck and have the least romantic night in the world,” she finds herself offering. “Wanna come? We can make fun of all the people lugging enormous teddy bears on and off the Metro.”

On the rare occasions when Natasha invites people to do things, there’s a moment between heartbeats where she fervently wishes she could take it back, because it’s easier to be alone than to wrangle with the complexities of regular human interaction. She awaits that feeling now, but all that comes is relief when Clint’s eyes come back to life and he says, with the first smile she’s seen all day, “That--yeah, I think that would be good.”

-2-

Natasha returns from Bangkok with three broken fingers and a furious, scraping hunger for greasy American food. “I want a cheeseburger,” she growls at Clint the second she stalks off the quinjet.

“Um.” Clint squints at the temporary splint around her fingers, then at the doctor waiting by the hangar doors. “Didn’t Coulson order you straight to Medical? Also, maybe you haven’t looked at the calendar, but today’s--”

“Maybe I wasn’t clear,” Natasha says, sharpening the points of each word. It’s been three years since she joined SHIELD, which means that none of the agents milling around express surprise when she grabs a handful of Clint’s shirt and jerks him close. “I’m _getting_ a fucking burger, and I don’t _care_ what anyone else wants me to do.”

Clint yanks himself out of her grasp. “Jesus, okay, _okay,_ we’ll go! Russians,” he sighs to Sitwell, who sniffs in disapproval. “So fiesty.”

In fairness to Natasha, she’s been undercover for over six months, and portraying a character uncomfortably close to her Red Room handlers hasn’t been pleasant, or easy. The deeper into the role she dug, the more she missed the comforts of her found home, her new life. Some of these things were big--her agency, her independence, her morals, and _god,_ not to mention her personal income--and some of these things were small.

For instance: “God _damn_ I missed cheeseburgers,” she sighs with a groan that, judging by Clint’s half-glazed expression, is more pornographic than she intended. He continues to stare as she demolishes her dinner, though that’s probably more due to the speed at which she inhales it. “Whatever,” she tells him, stealing a fry. “This is your fault--I didn’t even _eat_ cheeseburgers until I met you.”

“Happy to be of service,” says Clint with a hand flourish that functions as a bow. He grins, lopsided and a little goofy, and the last of the tension slides out of Natasha’s shoulders. Her hand still hurts, but now that she’s eaten, her hunger-induce tunnel vision evens out and she can actually take in her surroundings. They’re in a diner, a greasy spoon not too far from the Triskelion, and outside the February stars shine hard in the cold. It can’t be more than 30 degrees out, and yet there’s a ton of people out, couple after couple strolling by arm in arm against the wind. “I tried to tell you,” Clint says when she points this out. “It’s Valentine’s Day.”

“Oh. Right,” Natasha says. Undercover, it’s easy to forget what day it is in the real world, that there’s any other count to days besides the tally marks she furtively scratches into the heel of her boot. Anyway, the Red Room (correctly) considered Valentine’s Day to be Western capitalism disguised in red roses and pink hearts, and summarily dismissed it, making the middle of February completely irrelevant to Natasha. Thus, it takes her a second to process the fact that this time last year, Clint was busy. “Wait. Shouldn’t you be out with--what’s her name? Jessica?”

Clint looks at his hands, a tell she’s not sure he knows he has. “Nah, we broke it off about a month after you went under. Apparently I’m”--his knuckles crack when he bends his fingers into air quotes--“‘A disaster of colossal proportions,’ so. That’s about all I did while you were gone.”

Something flares fast and dark behind her breastbone, gone before she can catch it. “Well,” she begins, _she’s not totally wrong_ ; but no, she can’t say that when his clear eyes are clouded with resignation and defeat. She’s learned a thing or two since she joined SHIELD: how to be kind, how to set her phaser to stun rather than of kill. Instead, Natasha covers his hand with hers and solemnly tells him, “You _are_ a disaster, but the only one I trust to watch my back.”

Her words hang between their shakily honest smiles for one silver moment, then Clint laughs. “You _missed_ me,” he announces. “Admit it: working without me is boring.” He slaps the table as he gets up. “C’mon, let’s get ice cream before you go to Medical and get your hand checked out.”

Natasha rolls her eyes. “I did _not_ miss you,” she retorts as she follows him out the door, “Not remotely,” but she suspects they both know it’s not true.

-3-

Just past midnight, they’re airlifted from Lumphat straight to SHIELD’s secure hospital in Taiwan. In the helicopter, Natasha leans on the gaping wound in Clint’s side and refuses to let anyone relieve her: “I’m stronger than you,” she says by way of dismissing the medic. He’s probably a very capable man, she can admit, but he doesn’t have superhuman strength, and therefore cannot possibly exert as much pressure as she can, and therefore is useless to her. Only when they refuse to take her through the doors to surgery with Clint does she let go.

“You did a good job,” Coulson tells her, setting a reassuring hand on her shoulder regardless of the fact that it’s covered in blood and dust. “You kept him alive, and now he’s going to survive. That’s _you_ , Romanoff, you saved him--Romanoff?”

Natasha doesn’t ever, would _never,_ do something so familiar as _hug_ someone, but she slumps against Coulson and doesn’t embrace so much as hold on to avoid collapsing to the floor. _You’re getting his suit dirty, you’re making a scene, everyone is here and everyone is staring at you,_ but she doesn’t care, she can’t make herself care. It’s long fuzzy minutes before she can bring herself to stand alone again.

It wouldn’t have been so bad if she’d been the one in the way of the explosion. Her body was designed to heal itself from concussive blasts; but it was Clint who dropped his quiver on the landmine, Clint who doubled back to help Natasha cut down some durians for lunch, Clint who was ultimately saved by the fact that he’d bent over laughing at Natasha’s reaction to the disgusting odor the fruit gave off. Still, the shrapnel hit him with full force, burying itself seemingly everywhere, and Natasha was… _afraid_.

Afraid because she’d watched people bleed out from lacerations like that, in cleaner environments. Afraid because he wasn’t answering her even when he was conscious and seemingly lucid. Afraid because Clint was just a regular human, standard breakable bones and unenhanced fragile skin; because this regular, fracturable, _idiot_ human had somehow become a person-- _the_ person--she cared about; and because she hadn’t quite realized this fact until she’d applied pressure to the site and he’d wheezed, “I’m not worth the effort, Nat,” before passing out.

He was worth the effort-- _he is,_ she corrects herself, even if she doesn’t know what it means, or what to do with any of these nebulous puzzle-edged feelings jangling within her. She puts the puzzle aside and gathers her wits; debriefs with Coulson, submits to her own medical inspection, showers and changes into civilian clothes, takes up post at Clint’s bedside as soon as he’s assigned a room. “We’ve got space for you at the hotel,” Coulson says, but quickly adds, “But I know you don’t want it,” before Natasha can turn him down. He watches her for a moment and she’s fairly certain he can not only see the box of puzzle pieces rattling around inside her, but knows exactly how they click together. In typical Coulson fashion, he nods enigmatically and leaves without telling Natasha how to solve anything. _Of course._

She orders room service, hoping that not even a hospital can fuck up grilled cheese and tomato soup. “Are you his wife, hon?” the cafeteria worker on the phone asks.

“Yes, of course,” Natasha lies automatically, then stews over the interaction over the forty minutes it takes for the food to arrive. Someone’s gotten creative with the plating, which seems impractical in a hospital setting: the grilled cheeses are cut into angular hearts and the blobs of sour cream on their soup are also heart-ish in shape. There’s even a bouquet of paper flowers in a vase on the tray.

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” says the orderly with a kind smile. “We’re sorry you have to spend this romantic evening in the hospital.”

“Oh,” Natasha says weakly. “That’s… that’s very nice of you. Thanks.” She resolves to destroy all evidence of the holiday before Clint wakes up, but naturally, he does this as soon as the orderly leaves the room.

“Is she gone?” he asks. his voice is raspy from disuse and intubation, and weirdly modulated, like his hearing’s off. A rivulet of fear slides down Natasha’s throat.

“She’s gone,” she confirms, and he grins, or tries to. “Clint, I--I’m--” She stares at her hands and searches for her usual facility with words. “I’m really glad that you’re okay. Like, um, _really_ glad. And I probably don’t say this enough, or ever, but, um. I, like, care about you, or whatever, so I appreciate you not dying and still being my partner and all that.”

It all comes out in one big rush and directly into her hands, so she’s nervous to look up; but when she does, Clint studies her with a wary gaze. “Were--did you say something?” Cautiously, he lifts a hand to feel one ear, then the other. “It feels like my ears are full of cotton. I can’t--I can barely hear you.”

 _Of course._ “I didn’t say anything,” Natasha sighs, then writes the same message down on the bedside memo pad when Clint scowls and shakes his head. [ _They said you might experience some hearing loss_ ] she writes.

[ _Permanently?_ ] Clint scribbles back; his hands tremble. There should be a doctor here for this conversation, probably, but Natasha can’t bring herself to ring the call button just yet, won’t let Clint go into that fight alone or unarmed. She reaches over the bed’s guardrail and holds his hand, long enough that he likely knows the answer before she writes it.

[ _Possibly_ ] she writes, and Clint only glances at the page before turning his face away. Outside the hospital window, the sun is setting and the Taiwanese skyline glitters. The glass facade of the Taipei 101 building is lit up with multistory hearts and roses, and they watch the animations cycle through in silence.

Eventually, Clint picks up the pen again. [ _I guess this is the end of our partnership_ ] he scrawls before sharply tossing the pad Natasha’s direction. “No,” she says immediately, regardless of the fact that he can’t hear her. When he won’t look at her, she gets up and walks around the bed until he can’t avoid her eyes. “Clint, _no,_ ” she says again, shaking her head emphatically. It’s unthinkable, it’s-- _terrifying_.

[ _They can’t make me work with anyone else_ ] she writes, more or less shoving it in his face until he finally smirks and rolls his eyes. [ _I’ve defected before, I’ll do it again_ ]

At last, Clint puts his hands up in supplication. “Fine,” he says, and she watches him swallow back frustration that he can’t hear himself talk. Looking around, his eyes land on their grown-cold romantic feast. “What’s with the hearts?”

Natasha laughs. [ _It’s Valentine’s Day. Also, I maybe told the cafeteria I was your wife_ ] She shrugs innocently when Clint levels a skeptical glare in her direction. He writes something, scribbles it out, and then just points to the food. For a hospital dinner, they agree it’s not so bad, and by the time Clint nods off, there’s a smile on his face again.

Later, in the dim light of the bedside reading lamp, Natasha deciphers the crossed out comment: [ _As if I’d ever be so lucky_ ]

-4-

“Get dressed!” Clint declares as soon as she lets him into her apartment. “We’re going out!”

“Why,” begins Natasha, “Are you in a suit?” And not just any suit: a _nice_ one, tailored to accommodate his broad shoulders and accentuate his physique. Not that she’s paying attention to his physique. That much.

“It’s Valentine’s Day!” Clint says, as if this explains anything. “We’re going out!”

“You already said that,” Natasha points out. “ _Why_ are we going out? Don’t you have a date?”

The look Clint sends her is incredulous. “ _Me?_ A _date?_ Please.” Having heard the number of women gushing over his charm or his arms in the SHIELD locker room, Natasha’s not sure where this skepticism is coming from. There are scores of agents that would love to spend Valentine’s Day with Clint Barton, not to mention the guy in his building who gives her the evil eye every time she’s there, and yet he’s here in her living room with a dangerously endearing smile. “I just figured I owed you, since last year we were lost in a swamp for Valentine’s Day and the year before, well--” His hand unconsciously fingers the slim wire that curves behind the helix of his ear. “Anyway, I made a reservation at Fiola. Unless--well, I guess I should’ve asked if you had plans…”

It’s that little self-conscious touch, one silent reference to where they’ve been and what they are to each other, that gets her. Natasha gestures to her oversized fisherman’s sweater and mismatched socks, the lopsided bun haphazardly secured with a SHIELD-issue pen. “The only plans I have are with my couch,” she laughs. “I can reschedule. Give me fifteen minutes.” The black dress she pulls on is slightly shorter than necessary, especially considering the fact that it’s February, but it’s strapless and lacy and curve-hugging, and she refuses to think about what this decision might indicate. She sits on her bed to tighten the straps of her red patent leather heels and tries not to analyze what it means that she hasn’t spent a Valentine’s Day without Clint in about four years. _Why wouldn’t I?_ she argues with herself in the mirror as she applies her makeup. _We’re partners, we do everything together. We’re best friends._ But Natasha sat down with a bottle of vodka long ago and solved the puzzle; she’s never been able to lie to herself for long.

She keeps whiskey in her bar just for when Clint comes over, and he chokes on it when she walks out. “Jeez, Nat, warn a guy,” he sputters, pulling at the collar of his shirt as his freckles are buried under a dull red blush.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Natasha smirks, shrugging into coat he offers her. “I always dress like this.” Clint grumbles along the hall after her; but he hooks her hand through his elbow as they walk, and his foot nudges hers under the dinner table, and when they go dancing afterwards, his hand is warm on her back as he guides her, surefooted and confident, through the steps. They’re not home until 4, tipsy and full of the crashing adrenaline that only comes from closing three clubs in a row. “Just sleep here,” Natasha urges when Clint turns for the door. She plops onto the bed and sticks her feet out. “Stay. Help.”

“You’re a pain in the ass,” Clint says, but his voice is fond and he unstraps her shoes with fingers so kind and gentle that Natasha could weep, or kiss him, or both.

Instead, she repeats, “Stay,” and counts it as a victory when Clint sighs, discards his suit and dress shirt, and curls up on the other side of her bed like he’s always belonged there, and like they won't wake up wrapped around each other in the morning.

-5-

Natasha regrets giving Steve unrestricted access to her apartment in Avengers tower when he walks in on her pacing in front of her closet in a bright floral robe.

“Something wrong?” he asks, folding his arms and leaning against her bedroom door with a smirk.

“No,” says Natasha, distracted.

Undeterred, Steve continues, “Does it have anything to do with this Valentine’s Day dinner Tony organized? Specifically, that Clint’s coming back from the farm for it?”

This time Natasha turns and gives him a full-blown glare. “ _No._ ” She turns her attention back to the rack of dresses Pepper had wheeled into her apartment a week prior. There was once a time when it would be Clint holding up her door frame and critiquing her dress options, but that was before the aliens, before the bite mark on his arm and the Battle and the back of Clint’s beat up Mustang as he hightailed out of the city posthaste. [ _i need time to think_ ] he texted her; that had been six months ago. She sends him monthly updates--[ _I’m working with Steve now and he still won’t let me throw his shield; I don’t know why but Thor’s shaved his beard and it’s NOT BETTER_ ]--but he doesn’t answer.

She misses Clint a million times for a billion reasons, like when Steve’s face gets all serious and kind and he says, “Do you want to talk about it?” Clint would never do that, would just start offering absurd solutions to the problem until she couldn’t stand but set him straight. But Clint’s not here, and the thing about Steve is that talking to him is so _easy_.

“I miss Clint,” she admits, the first time she’s ever said it aloud. “And I’m worried about him. And I--”

“Love him?” Steve supplies, and Natasha scowls.

“Let’s not get carried away,” she says in a voice that quivers. He knows, she knows; everyone knows the truth, but that doesn’t mean she can actually unstick the word from her tongue. “Anyway, I haven’t seen him in a while and I just want it to be…” All the words that come to mind sound incredibly stupid-- _magical, perfect, absolutely wonderful_ \--so she settles: “Good?”

“Good,” Steve repeats, skeptical, and Natasha throws him a pleading sort of look. “Okay! I can help with good! Show me the dresses.”

When Thor wanders in an hour later--she seriously needs to reconsider her security protocols--Natasha and Steve have picked out a one-shouldered gown the color of fresh plums and have moved on to pedicures. More accurately, Natasha has persuaded Steve to let her test nail colors on his toes and Steve, in foolish kindness, has acquiesced. “Ah!” exclaims Thor, whose beard, thankfully, has grown back virtually overnight. “Is this what Midgardians refer to as a hibernation party? I would have brought some mead!”

“Slumber party,” Natasha gently corrects, not looking up from her work.

“I’m helping Natasha _get ready for tonight_ ,” Steve unsubtly hints to Thor.

“Yes,” says Thor soberly. “We are all looking forward to Barton’s return, though of course your reunion will surely be of a different sort!” Natasha pretends not to notice Steve cutting Thor off. “Oh, and--and of course, Steven, I’m sure your date with Captain Hill will also go well.”

Steve snorts. “I don’t think a date with Maria is going to go well now that my toes look like candy.”

Natasha caps her nail polish. “Steve, I’m pretty sure Maria isn’t going to give a shit, and if you’re naked and she’s looking at your toenails then you are _definitely_ doing something wrong.”

Thor winks. “Maybe Captain Rogers likes feet,” he suggests with an innocent grin. “Much in the way my brother likes horses.”

“I think we’ve lost focus,” Steve says hastily, scrambling to his feet. “Isn’t the party in an hour?” Under his direction, Natasha climbs into her dress, Thor demonstrates a deft hand at hairstyling, and Steve applies his artistry to her makeup. “You look, um, very nice,” he says at last. Both Steve and Thor are beaming as if she’s their eldest child about to leave for prom; Thor even tries to snap a picture before she hugs each of them in thanks before shooing them out the door.

And then it’s time to go, and then she’s taking the elevator to the newly rebuilt penthouse suite, and then she’s making small talk with Pepper Potts, all the while keeping one eye on the door all the time and continuously sweeping the room to see if Clint’s slipped in somehow.

And she’s not all that subtle, apparently, because Pepper says, “I’m sure he’ll come find you when he gets here.” She purses her lips. “If he knows what’s good for him.”

“Clint Barton has never known what’s good for him,” Natasha tells her. Maria, passing by, jumps into the conversation to agree, and together they get swept up recounting some of STRIKE Team Delta’s more ridiculous hijinks. Maria knows most of them, but Natasha brings out the things they never wrote on the mission reports: “--So then, we’ve _covered_ in mud and giant bug guts, right, _dripping_ head to toe, and Clint just walks up to the bar like, ‘Two Coronas, please,’ and proceeds--no, really, proceeds to chug them _both_ \--”

Amid the laughter, there’s a mildly indignant voice: “C’mon, Nat, they were Mastra. Who orders a Corona in Uruguay?” And he’s there, as if he was never gone, nursing a snifter of whiskey and wearing a crooked smile on his face to match his crooked bowtie. “Uh, hey everyone. Long time, no see?”

Maria rolls her eyes at Natasha. “Welcome back, doofus,” she says, patting him just too hard on the cheek. The team is more effusive in its greeting: Steve shakes his hand, Thor hands Natasha Clint’s whiskey before sweeping him up in a hug. Everyone wants to know how the farm is, and it’s twenty minutes before the crowd disperses and they find themselves sitting alone on Tony’s heated balcony, looking more at each other than at the city lights.

“So,” Clint says, one syllable that stretches endlessly. “Happy Valentine’s Day?”

“You’re the worst,” Natasha informs him; or, tries to, but her lower lip wobbles and she has to close her eyes. She’d missed him, _god,_ she’d missed him.

“I know,” he says simply. “I know. And I’m sorry.” His hand cradles the curve of her face, thumb brushing sparks across her lip, but he snatches his hand away when her eyes snap open. “Sorry,” he says again. “I don’t know what--I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come tonight.”

Natasha catches his hand and holds it. “That’s not true,” she insists. “I’m glad you’re here.” Slowly, maintaining eye contact, she brings his hand back to her face, then runs her own fingers along his jaw in parallel. “I missed you,” she whispers when he relaxes and leans into her hand. “Will you stay?”

She doesn’t say: _I want you to stay._ She doesn’t say: _I love you._ She doesn’t say: _Please._ And they sit there together, connected only by the warmth of their palms and the things they don’t say, for what feels like years.

“Fury’s sending me undercover in the morning,” Clint says at last, his breath soft against her wrist. “Rostov-on-Don. Six months, minimum.” He doesn’t look happy, per se, but he does look determined. “I have to--I _need_ to prove to myself that I won’t hurt the people I care about, Nat,” he says, fiddling in his pocket. “That’s the team, and this city, and you.” He blushes. “Maybe not in that order. When I’m done with that, I’ll be back, and then--” He’s always been quick on his feet: in one swift move, he’s pushed a box into her hands, gotten to his feet, and pressed a lingering kiss on her cheek. “Then we’ll finish this conversation.”

The box holds a necklace, a delicate silver arrow strung along a fine chain, and when it pops out of her collar at work the next day, Steve doesn’t mention it.

+1

The night before she becomes Councilwoman Hawley, Natasha texts Clint from her burner phone. [ _Meet Me in St. Louis_ ] she writes, gnawing her lip.

[ _Annie Get Your Gun_ ] Clint texts back an hour later. Relieved, Natasha snaps the flip phone in half, goes to sleep, and wakes up ready to burn her whole world down.

Afterwards, after Maria blows the helicarriers and Fury buries himself and Congress attempts to drag them all through the mud, Natasha takes her time. She tours the country closing up a few SHIELD safehouses before HYDRA gets to them, then spends a few months kicking around the tower helping Maria and Pepper rehome SHIELD agents and set up the Stark takeover of the Avengers initiative. She writes op-eds about the poisonous sect within SHIELD and submits them to _The New York Times_ and _The Washington Post_ under one of her academic aliases; she reads more than she has in the past ten years.

And finally, just as February in New York gets bitter and cruel, she boards a plane from JFK to Dubai to Victoria, Seychelles, rents a car, and drives the narrow island streets until she reaches the house. This is no spartan SHIELD safehouse, nor one of her 300 square feet boltholes tucked above a boulangerie. Right after she left the Red Room, Natasha took a quick job stealing art, made a huge profit, and bought this beach house in the tiny Saint Louis district of the Seychelles Islands. It’s luxurious, far too big and too far away for her to ever really use it, and she loves it dearly.

This _is_ where she told Clint to meet her, but she’s still surprised when she opens the door and is met with the glorious aroma of freshly brewed coffee, a certain indicator that he’d safely arrived. “Clint?” she calls, heaping her bags in the echoing foyer and making a beeline for the kitchen. She finds the coffee, but not Clint; further investigation leads her out to the pool, where Clint turns out to be tanning-slash-deeply-asleep on a lounge despite the fact that it’s 11 am local time.

 _Typical._ “Barton,” she says, sitting on his lounge and shaking his shoulder. “ _Barton._ Wake up. _”_

She’s not expecting him to grab her the second he wakes up. “Whas--who--” He shakes his head and peers over the lenses of his sunglasses, then smiles wide and bright. “Natasha?”

“Hi,” she says, oddly shy. She’s spent these 24 hours of travel preparing to say other things, Serious and Meaningful things; but now, in the moment, all she can do is trace the fading bruise on his shoulder, spread her hands across his chest. When Natasha looks up, ostensibly to say one of those Serious or Meaningful things, Clint is watching her cautiously, hopefully.

It’s not time for words, she realizes, but for actions. Linking her hands behind his neck, Natasha draws Clint’s mouth to his and kisses him, soft and true, the way she wished she had at Tony’s party, the way she wanted to the night before the helicarriers fell. Later, they’ll talk, but what she wants now is to feel Clint alive and vibrant under her hands, pulse thrumming under his skin at the same tempo as her own. Everything else, everything besides his hands on her skin and the taste of coffee on his tongue and the tropical sun shining on their happiness, can definitely wait.

“Do you know,” Natasha says at last, nudging Clint to make room for her to lie next to him on the lounge, “Today’s Valentine’s Day.”

“No shit?” Clint laughs. “You know, honestly, whenever I told people what we did for Valentine’s Day, they always told me--”

“‘That sounds like a date,’” Natasha recites along with him. “Maria, right?”

“Stark, actually,” he says. “Rogers actually mentioned it once. And so did Coulson…” There’s a pause where Clint tilts his head one way and Natasha the other. “Are we--Nat, have we been dating the whole time?”

“Maybe,” Natasha says, laughing when Clint sighs and hangs his head. “Probably. But hey--let’s figure it that out later. For now--” Natasha smiles and kisses Clint, who wraps his arms around her, and all conversation is tabled for a time much, much later.


End file.
